Monday Mashup: The Mind Of A Genius

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Every week, we scour the web to bring you interesting bits and pieces from around the world. Enjoy!

The Mind of a Genius

This profile on mathematician and certified genius Terence Tao is as mystifying as it is magical. For anyone who grew up with an affinity for letters over numbers, the descriptions of high-level maths in this article are enticing. It’s also a peek into true genius — the kind that provokes and encourages the genius in others.

Cross-Cultural Parenting

While this article focuses on comparing and contrasting American and German parenting styles, it really goes much deeper into parenting philosophy. The author, an expat American with a penchant for her culture’s ‘helicopter parenting’, writes about five parenting lessons she learned from her German peers.

AI and Autism

This fascinating, though tricky-to-understand, study experiments with nerve networks in artificial intelligence in order to probe into autism disorders. Researchers found that they could prompt autistic behaviors from a basic AI depending on how the artificial ‘neural’ network was programmed. No one is saying it’s a breakthrough, but it is a significant step in understanding a condition associated with such a wide range of symptoms.

Empowering or Enforcing?

Social media has long been touted as empowering, and indeed in many ways it can be. But some forms of social media are simply reinforcing cultural norms researchers have found — not all of which are good for women. Next door, in Pakistan, a kind of digital purdah isn’t uncommon. Sadly, the scenarios described don’t sound impossible here.